Friday, December 08, 2006

Kali copies Mel Crawford and I give a critique

Kali has done a good thing. She is copying someone really good to try to learn from him.She copied a page from my favorite Golden Book of all time, "Pebbles Flintstone" illustrated by the king of Golden Books, Mel Crawford.

I remember seeing this book on a golden book shelf in a drug store when I was 11 and my eyes popped out of my head. The wrong colors on the characters, the brash painting style, the angled yet organic drawings just exploded in my brain.

I begged my nanny, Mrs. O'Neil to cough up the whole 29 cents to get me this amazing thing and she did. (She also bought me Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" for Christmas after my Dad refused to get me any of that dirty hippie music!)

Anyway, more on Mel Crawford later.

Everyone can learn faster by copying the greats. But copy with intense self criticism. Don't be a pussy! If something doesn't look exactly the same as what you copied, then it's wrong and you should analyze why it looks different and then try to correct it.

It helps to have someone who is a pro already to help critique it for you, and if you are so lucky, then be like Kali and appreciate the free help! If not, then keep copying and fixing your copies as best you can and have no ego about it.

Having an ego when you are young is a huge detriment to your progress as an artist.

Kali is brave enough to let me share my critique of her very good copy with you so that if you are young and eager, you can also benefit.

Spumko (3:51:07 PM): if they were painted flat tan color you wouldn't see them where they cross his bodySpumko (3:51:29 PM): Mel uses shadows sort of like cartoons use linesSpumko (3:51:37 PM): just to clarify separate partsKali Fontecchio (3:51:43 PM): oooh

Spumko (3:51:50 PM): they are not sensibleSpumko (3:52:01 PM): not like light and shadow in real lifeKali Fontecchio (3:52:17 PM): i see that now

Spumko (3:52:40 PM): in most of the images, there is less shadow than main body colorsKali Fontecchio (3:52:48 PM): ya the cat's butt originally had a sharp shadow line

Spumko (3:52:50 PM): except at the bottom of DinoKali Fontecchio (3:52:51 PM): mine is fuzzySpumko (3:53:04 PM): but there the shadow is MORE than half a legSpumko (3:53:18 PM): which makes the thin strip of main color seem like a highlight

Spumko (3:59:09 PM): it splits the leg into two images if you make shadows that are parallel to the object they are describingSpumko (3:59:43 PM): In Mel's the shadow fades out faster and avoids becoming a darker stripe on his leg

Spumko (4:00:34 PM): Important point: Don't put a whole bunch of textures and different colors all in the same area. Like on Dino's body near the spotsSpumko (4:00:43 PM): it becomes messy and a jumble

Spumko (4:01:24 PM): the spots are the important design information there, so try not to distract from them with extra colors and stripes and texturesSpumko (4:01:29 PM): too noisyKali Fontecchio (4:01:33 PM): ya

Spumko (4:02:11 PM): in Mel's, the purple texture starts around the far edge of the spots and leaves most of them in the clear where you can see them easily

Spumko (4:02:40 PM): Follow the general thoughts here?Kali Fontecchio (4:02:52 PM): ya completelySpumko (4:03:13 PM): OK, try copying another painting and see if you get a clearer image

Hey, great job Kali!! Your marker work looks great! Thanks for letting all of us learn from John's critique, which was super informative. It's sometimes impossible to see your own mistakes without the help of someone more experienced. Of course, there will always be lots of people who refuse to see their mistakes even after someone with more experience has pointed them out.

On another note, I think I've had good results before with mixing cool colors over warm colors for shading, and vice versa. Maybe too much muddies up the colors though?

Usually when i draw somehting i love it. I jump up and down in astonishment of what i have just created,and show it to my family.

The next day i look at the drawing again and notice 27 different mistakes. Even if i know there are mistakes in the drawing, i usually cant find them untill the next day.

What i really need to do is what Kali is doing and then re-draw the drawing and get rid of the mistakes untill i have a drawing im truly proud of. Unfortunatly i dont have a drafting table or any real ''drawing surface'' so i usually just draw somehting new ''because its funner''.

Im going to build a drating table soon, and hopefully then ill be able to have some solid drawing practice.

Great first attempt, Kali. Thanks for sharing John’s critique with the rest of us slobs.I’ve been watching and listening to John critique artists and students for 18 years now. As always, his commentary is direct, articulate, informed, educational and ultimately invaluable.

As with Art Lozzi’s HB work, Mel Crawford’s classic Golden Books are a great place to learn design and color theory. They’ve been inspiring cartoonists for more than forty years. The great Mel Crawford is alive and well and still painting, or course - but !I just found out he teaches, too. For anyone living in the New England area who may be interested in taking an art course from a genius, here’s his website:

http://melcrawford.com/store/about.php

Drop him an email and tell him how much you admire his brilliant Golden Books!

She's already so good and yet she's still pushing herself to get better. And your critique is very reasoned. Clarity. That's what I like about it. Clarity and specifics.

"This is wrong, this is why, try this instead."

I wish more teachers were into that kind of thing. I had maybe two in my art school days. One was a former army helicopter pilot/Vietnam vet. Maybe being in an actual war eliminated a lot of the touchy-feely indirectness.

People should understand this kind of criticism isn't saying you're bad at drawing. It's a learning tool to become better!

Oh yeah and the resistance to copying as a learning tool. That's mere foolishness. Every art technique has a precedent that's identifiable. You have to learn them in order to use them properly and that requires copying in some way, shape or fashion.

When you're learning shading, more than likely you're trying to shade in some way you saw in a picture you admired.

People forget that in all the "art is subjective" talk, the tools and methodology of art are objective. They exist in history as a body of knowledge to use and learn from.

No one goes out to build a house without having first learned how to hammer nails and saw wood and take measurements. And they learn these things by copying what other builders have done.

So it is with art.

Writing too. Rod Serling said all writers start off copying someone. He said he himself started off as a third-rate Hemingway imitator.

I like the way Kali's Dino looks more than Mel's. Except the straightness of Dino's back, the head hair and the corners of the mouth in the original are more pleasing. The head in Kali's Dino is especially nice; the paleness under the eyes and on top of the snout is much more interesting.Of course better is almost as bad as worse if you're going for an exact copy...

THANK YOU KALI AND JOHN!! This is so useful!!! I love how SPECIFIC John is, there is nothing extraneous about the information. I know I've said this about 5 times now, but this is the best. post. ever.

Did you get this pic from Clarke' Inspiration Grab Bag or from real life?

Thanks John and Kali! John, it's really helpful for us to see one to one comparisons and your comments. Sometimes I think I understand your lessons and apply them, but my eye doesn't have enough experience to see the difference or the error in my ways.

Kali, you do fantastic work! Thanks for being brave enough to let John blog about his critique. I know it must leave you feeling a little exposed. But it's really, really helpful!

This is off the topic. But, is there anyone that could help me figure out what to do with a problem I'm having.

I was offered a chance to do some cartoons for the public access channel in my area. The thing is they want me to do stuff like Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Sea Lab 2021.

I know I can do it. Heck, anyone can. It's not the challenge that I wanted. I told them I wanted to bring back the quality of the early cartoons like you have been discussing on your blog, John. They said they agreed with me that kids haven't changed, but the t.v. programming has. Then they showed me what they liked and wanted. I started to get sick.

Am I wrong to fell disgusted in what they wanted. It just seemed lazy to me. I'm not a professional, but I'd like to be someday. I'm afraid if I do this I would be labeled a lazy animator.

Should I do it for the money and then make better cartoons? Or, should I just walk away and look somewhere else?

Super fun! Breaking down Mel's work like that was a great idea. Thanks again for letting it be posted, Kali.

I had a class a few night ago that talked about warm colors vs cool colors. The theory was that warm tones bring the subject forward, and cool tones make it recede. Sort of an illusion you can create with temperature.

Wow, that was great! It was really nice to be able to read the points and go back and look at the 2 pictures and see the differences you were observing. Lovely to get an idea of what you are looking for and the guides, better than a spot the differences exercise, hearing the reasoning for doing one thing over the other is excellent.Thankyou both very much, it is good emphasis on what you have been teaching, and extremely generous.